Страница 4 из 110
Speaking the Dao
Speech Rights
Spirit
Standing the Body
Stick(y)
Strange Talent
Streetsickness
Striking Red
Sweet
Taiwan
Third of the Third
This Him
Three-Hairs
Three Seconds
Tiananmen
Tincture of Iodine
Traitor to the Chinese
Uh
Vernacular/Empty Talk
Will/Willing
Yellow-Grass Miasma
Yellowskin
*River
: The word for river (jiang in Mandarin) is pronounced gangby Maqiao people (in southern China) and refers not just to vast bodies of water, but to all waterways, including small ditches and streams. In northern China, on the other hand, the word "sea" is used to cover everything from lakes to ponds, which must seem equally strange to southerners. Size, it appears, is something left for people to worry about later.
In English, difference in size can be expressed by "stream" or "river." Yet in French, fleuve refers to rivers entering the sea and riviere indicates an inland river or tributary entering another river, while size remains unspecified. It seems that the world contains many systems of naming, which do not necessarily relate to each other.
Although Maqiao people later on became more specific about size, they still didn't seem to attach much importance to it, only differentiating it slightly by tone. Gang pronounced in a high, level tone refers to a large river, and in a rising tone to a rivulet or stream; it takes some time for outsiders to attune their ears to avoid misunderstandings. As a newcomer to Maqiao, I ran into such difficulties myself when I went off in excited search of a river, following directions from locals. My destination turned out to be a gurgling brook so narrow I could reach the other side in one flying leap. Some dark waterweed lay within and watersnakes would flash by una
Rising-tone gang is very different from high-tone gang. Following this rising-tone gang for a stretch, I wandered alternately between torrents and calm, and then back to torrents. I felt myself scattering in pieces then coming together again, as if repeatedly lost, then found. When I came across an old herdsman, he said not to dismiss the river for its size-in the past, its water had been so oily it could be used to light lamps.
amp;Luo River
: Maqiao's water flowed into the Luo River, a good halfday's walk from the village. There was a little rowboat for crossing, and if the boatman wasn't there then people wanting to cross simply rowed themselves over. If the boatman was there, it cost five cents per person. He moored the rowboat on the opposite side, stuck the boat pole well into the ground, and stood on the bank taking each person's money, one by one, licking a finger to count each note.
Once he'd collected a good handful of notes, he tucked them in a tattered wool hat and pulled it firmly onto his head.
The cost of crossing the river remained the same whether in summer or winter. In fact, the river in summer was much wider, and the water much more turbulent. If it happened to be the flood season, the bottomless brown soup overflowed unstoppably, obscuring all reflections, expelling layer upon layer of mire onto the banks, along with sour-smelling piles of foam which the slow lapping of the water marooned on the shallow bends. But the worse the conditions became, the more people gathered on the riverbanks, patiently waiting for dead ducks, dead pigs, broken tables or old wooden pots, along with bamboo canes split off from bundles, to come bobbing along: fishing them out and taking them off home was called "making a flood fortune."
Of course, sometimes perhaps a woman or a child, swollen up into an enormous white flesh ball, would suddenly roll up out of the waves, their glazed stare scattering people, provoking cries of terror.
Some strong-stomached children would search out a long bamboo pole and amuse themselves by prodding at the flesh ball.
People at the riverbank also fished, by casting nets or with line and hook. Once, as I headed toward the bank, some women in front of me suddenly screeched in panic, turned, and ran-something, it would seem, had happened. When I took a more careful look at where they'd run from, I saw that all the men, old and young, carriers and herders, had stopped what they were doing, ripped off their pants, and run, stumbling, toward the river in a line of ten or more pairs of glistening buttocks, shouting at the tops of their voices. Only then did it occur to me that the muffled noise I had just heard was the sound of firecrackers. That is to say, firecrackers had been set off in the river to blast the fish. After the explosion, the men had pulled off their pants to go and hook the fish. Not wanting to get their pants wet, they hadn't foreseen that their spontaneously coordinated initiative would frighten anyone.
During my six years in Maqiao, I never had much to do with the Luo River, only crossing it when I happened to be walking to the county seat. Speaking of river crossing, five cents often seemed like a lot of money. None of the Educated Youth had much money and once the male students got together, a kind of resistance-hero-versus-Jap-devil-oppressors mentality set in: whenever we crossed the river, we always considered fare dodging. One Educated Youth, nicknamed Master Black, was particularly heroic when it came to this kind of stunt, and once, after getting onto the bank, he took on the role of Underground Worker Sacrificing Himself for the People-giving us a meaningful look, he told us to walk right on and that he'd pay for us all himself. He patted his right pocket, groped in his left pocket, and generally dragged his feet until he saw that we'd walked on a long way, when he snarled at the boatman that he didn't have any money, and even if he did he wouldn't hand it over, so what was he going to do about it? He then picked up his heels and ran. He fancied himself as something of a basketball player, and thought there was no way the old ferryman could catch him up. It turned out, though, that the issue of speed was irrelevant to the old man: shouldering an oar, he ran slowly and trailed further and further behind us, but he never stopped. He followed us for one It, two If, three It, four li… When finally we were staggering along, dripping with sweat, the tiny black dot far back in the distance still held on fast. Everyone truly believed that he would pursue us to the edge of heaven, brandishing the oar as he went, for as long as we hadn't paid him those thirty cents; short of us killing him, nothing else would persuade him to turn back. He wasn't half as clever as us and hadn't thought things through properly; not once did regret at abandoning his boat or the large crowd of customers waiting at the side of the river cross his mind.